05 May 2014

John Legere on AT&T and Verizon Short-Term Trickery (video); FCC Wants To Kill the Internet

Legere: AT&T, Verizon Plans Are Short-Term Trickery: Video - Bloomberg: (Allow video to load after clicking play)Legere says AT&T and Verizon Plans Are Short-Term Trickery (video above) - T-Mobile US President and CEO John Legere discusses the company’s customer growth on Bloomberg Television's “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg, May 1)T-Mobile adds another 2.4M customers in record quarter, within shouting distance of Sprint - GeekWire: T-Mobile added a net total of 2.4 million customers in the first quarter — the biggest growth in its history — including record expansion of 1.3 million customers in the coveted category of branded postpaid accounts. The continued growth takes the Bellevue-based wireless company to more than 49 million customers overall, up from 34 million a year ago. T-Mobile is now within 6 million customers of Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier....Meanwhile the FCC is trying to kill the internet with "fast and slow lanes" OR internet for the rich --Netflix brings net neutrality concerns to U.S. regulators | Reuters: "..."Tolls coming for the Web thanks to FCC. What is the FCC thinking?" Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings posted on his Facebook page last week when the news of the proposal leaked out. In a blog post on March 20, Hastings took a sharp stance against allowing Internet providers to charge fees for connections, including in deals known as "interconnection" or "peering" agreements that have traditionally been outside the scope of net neutrality as regulated by the FCC...."

I'm worried about how Net Neutrality will affect gaming! | The Tech Guy: " Episode 1079 Rusty from Los Angeles, CA Rusty makes video games and he's concerne with the FCCs new Net Neutrality rules. Leo says that the FCC is now taking public comments via email at openinternet@fcc.gov. Leo says that latency through buffering would kill video gaming as players would be too frustrated with it. So a free and open internet would be vital for gaming. And the big guys would be able to pay for unhindered access, but the indy's won't be able to. And innovation doesn't work that way."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s lame excuses for his net neutrality proposal.: " . . . . his proposal is the same plan offered by the largest cable and phone companies, which have tried to kill network neutrality for almost a decade. Since 2006, the phone and cable industries have proposed a world where they won’t “block” any websites, but they will simply create a lane for all websites and then charge anyone who wants better service for a fast lane....the cable and phone giants want this world to have no clear rules—just vague principles about what might be “commercially reasonable,” which is an invitation for small companies to sue the giants if they’re unhappy. Since the cable and telephone companies have more FCC lawyers than most companies have employees, they will scare off most potential companies suing and then beat the rest in “FCC court.” That’s basically what the chairman is backing—the often proposed AT&T/Verizon plan. It’s the plan that President Obama repeatedly opposed, beginning in 2006. It’s the plan that network neutrality advocates have fought against for eight years...."Hate Chrome hiding Web addresses? It may be the future - CNET: "...Chrome today shows the complete address, but with the new approach shows it only when you click the origin chip. You also can continue use the existing keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl/Cmd-L to reveal the full address. The origin chip itself changes from gray to green to signify a Web site with valid security credentials. The feature has been activated for some users of the Chrome browser. "This is a new UI experiment that's deployed to a small fraction of users," said Paul Irish, a Google developer advocate, in a Hacker News discussion about the feature Thursday. Change often generates a backlash, and that's exactly what happened here. One newly filed Chrome bug seeks to excise the origin chip. "This change is not needed at all, and I don't find it convenient at all. It's the newest crap that Google made after the 'great' idea of removing the scrollbar arrows. Glad that the scrollbar arrows are back. Now I would like the address bar to be back too," the bug submitter complained. More people are piling on to reinforce the opinion, too...."

Scientists Confirm The Existence Of Element 117ForbesThe official Periodic Table of the Elements is one step closer to adding element 117 to its ranks. That's thanks to an international team of scientists that was able to successfully create several atoms of element 117, which is currently known as Ununseptium ...